Fray
by grumkinsnark
Summary: "Seldom do these words ring true when I'm constantly failing you."


Written for LJ's softly_me's prompt listed in the summary.

* * *

**Fray**

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* * *

**

It happens nothing like what he thought it would. (Hoped it would.)

It happens nothing like what she thought it would. (Tried not to.)

It happens with fanfare, predictably, but of an entirely different, unwanted, kind.

It happens without smiles.

It happens without joy.

It happens with bloodshed. (Not the kind he likes.)

It happens with snapped bones, ripped flesh, broken bodies.

It happens.

* * *

_Darkness. The moon is new, the forest so shadowy a green it's black. She thinks it'd be much more fitting if the sky were red, if the forest were on fire. It's certainly how she feels._

_Stefan lies in her arms, head twisted the wrong way, blood still seeping, congealing, from the hole in his heart. The one that's pierced by wood, the one that took him away from her. Her tears mix with the dirt and blood on his face, and she cradles his body against her._

"_Stefan…oh God, Stefan…"_

_Sometime later she thinks his brother walks behind her, as if to say something, _do_ something, but she doesn't know for sure. She has no idea what's happened since the stake struck his chest, since his neck snapped._

"_Elena."_

_It's his voice, but she doesn't under—_

"Elena!"

Despite the unexpected wakeup, Elena doesn't flinch. She doesn't even open her eyes, not fully. A slit is all she allows, firelight assaulting her contracting pupils. Soon, though, something—some_one_—else comes into her vision, and she wishes she'd never opened her eyes at all.

"Elena," says Damon again, quieter. He hesitantly, lightly, sets his hand on her shoulder, and in some faraway part of her brain that actually gives a damn about anything she wonders if maybe he'd been sitting by the fire just a moment earlier, because his skin is warm against hers when it shouldn't be.

He says her name, only her name, doesn't ask the proverbial "Are you all right?" or "How are you doing?" or any of the other bullshit questions that she'd heard a thousand times over after her parents died. She guesses he knows what that kind of loss feels like.

"You need to drink something," he says, bringing a bottle of water into view. "You've been out of it for days."

She manages to shift her head from side to side, a pathetic rendition of "No."

However, unfortunately for her, just about the only thing you can't accuse Damon of is a lack of determination. "If you don't drink this, I swear I'll hook you up to an IV," he threatens. "I'm not above it."

She tries to glare, but isn't sure it comes across very well. Nevertheless, she knows Damon is deadly serious, and so to prevent getting needles pricked inside her, she awkwardly maneuvers into a sitting position. Before she can feebly grasp the bottle, Damon gently grips her jaw and forces the water down her throat. She coughs a bit, but her body takes over and starts swallowing. It isn't until she does so that she realizes just how much she'd needed it.

After a few moments, Damon takes away the bottle, saying something about how she shouldn't drink so much at the same time. How upending what little is in her stomach would do a whole lot more harm than good.

It's then, though, that she actually looks at him. His face is the same twenty-something perfection as ever, but his complexion is whiter than usual, his eyes a dark, dark navy (black) rather than their usual lightness, and there are faint purplish veins visible through his skin.

She frowns, more out of self-preservation (why she even wants to preserve herself at this point she has no idea) than concern. "When's the last time you fed?" she whispers.

A muscle in Damon's cheek twitches, and she almost _watches_ as his indifferent mask falls into place. "You know me…I never go long without feeding," he replies easily.

"Liar."

Damon sighs, never one to be able to resist her. "A while," he says. "I've been kind of busy."

It's her turn to flinch, and she shuts her eyes tight against the memories threatening to burst forth again. "But you have…you have time now…" she bites out, failing to clarify why.

Clarification he doesn't need.

"What, I'm supposed to leave you alone?" he asks rhetorically. "Not a chance."

"Oh, _now_ you decide to get protective," Elena snaps, a second meaning behind her words.

Damon clenches his jaw and stands up quickly, walking over to the assortment of alcohol and fills up a glass with whiskey. He drains it in one gulp and pours himself another.

Collecting his dwindling supply of pride, Damon says stiltedly, "I think there's some crackers in the kitchen. You should eat something."

She has no time to reply before he's up the stairs, a mere blur. She runs her hands roughly through her hair and lies back down, hating herself, hating him, hating everything.

* * *

She doesn't see him for over a week. She finally succumbed to her hunger and dragged herself into the kitchen where, as he'd said, there was a half-empty box of saltines and some almost-expired orange juice. Not exactly gourmet, but then, the two—well…one—owners of the house don't require human food, so.

She'd thought that perhaps he'd come down to mock her, or even feign some concern again, but he hadn't. She considered once or twice searching the house to see where he'd gone off to (tried not to think of the alternative), but refrained. If he wants to be stubborn, she can be too.

Finally, and she doesn't know whether it's her curiosity or her broken self being needy, she can't handle it anymore. The house's enormity gets too much. And just knowing that he's still inside but choosing to ignore her, is almost so oppressing it hurts.

Attempting (and not doing a very good job of it) to plug the gaping void in her heart, she walks to the stairs and, one deep breath later, ascends. She looks inside every room, even Damon's own, but he's nowhere to be found. Her mind frantically begins to think that he'd either left her or something awful had happened, but then she glances down the rest of the hallway, and realizes she'd missed a room.

Every nerve in her body is screaming at her that going in there would only cause her more pain, but she finds herself walking towards it, unwillingly. The door is cracked ajar, which is all she needs as confirmation.

He's there, sitting dead center on the carpet, legs drawn up and gaze somewhere off in the corner, unseeing. Not looking at anything around her, she strides over, kneeling down beside him.

"Damon?" she asks quietly. He looks over to her, and immediately she knows he still hasn't fed. She half-expects him to attack her right then and there, purely out of bloodlust, but he doesn't. "Damon, what are you doing?"

He doesn't answer for a moment, and she's about to speak again when he beats her to it. "You shouldn't be here," he says.

"What?"

Where once upon a time he would have repeated it sarcastically, this time it's repeated flatly. "You shouldn't be here. Not with me."

"What's wrong with you?" she asks, never one to pull punches with this particular Salvatore.

Damon scoffs, and tosses a book she hadn't seen him holding over to her. She glances down at it, and recognizes what it is. "Damon—"

"He had _faith_ in me," Damon states. "The bastard had _faith_ in me. And what did I do? I failed him. I let him get fucking _murdered_. _Destroyed_."

Elena swallows a sudden lump in her throat, gripping the journal with white knuckles. "It…it wasn't your fault," she says hollowly. She knows her words are true, but she wishes _so badly_ they weren't.

Damon laughs, and the harsh sound echoes through the empty room. "Wasn't my fault?" he says. "Of course it was my fault. Everything bad that happens is my fault. The witch was right about that at least."

"Bonnie? Damon, that was—"

"She was _right_, Elena," he interrupts. "All the times I've apologized, all the times I've tried to be good, it doesn't _mean anything_. Words don't mean jackshit when I'm constantly failing everyone. Failing Stefan. Failing _you_."

Elena knows the right thing to do would be to reiterate her "It's not your fault," but sincerely doubts that would do anything. It wouldn't help him, and it wouldn't help her, and it wouldn't fix what had transpired.

"How can you even want to stay here?" asks Damon, a delicate frown on his face. "After…after everything?"

"You're the only person I have left," replies Elena simply. "Misery loves company."

He stares at her, and there's such pain in his eyes (_he lost his brother_, she reminds herself) that she feels herself leaning forward, her lips a mere breath away from his. After a few seconds, Damon realizes what's happening, and takes her by the shoulders, keeping her at arm's length.

"Don't," he says. "Just—"

She doesn't respond (she doubts he expected one), doesn't even know what she'd say. Hell, she's not even entirely sure _why_ she nearly kissed him. Certainly not romance; desperation? Pity? She has no idea. But she does know it speaks volumes that _Damon_ had been the one to stop it. And that frightens her.

"You need blood, Damon," she says, wondering when exactly their roles had reversed. When she'd stopped being the one feeling like Raggedy Ann sans stuffing, and Damon had turned into Raggedy Andy, innards gone. "Look, I'll give you mine if you—"

"No," Damon snaps, eyes searing into hers. "I'd die first."

* * *

He doesn't sleep. He doesn't eat. He does nothing but sit in that center of Stefan's room, staring.

Elena makes it her mission to reverse all three.

She has a feeling deep down that all she's doing is setting aside her own grief in favor of something else, and that one of these days that dam is going to break and she'll be the one in his room staring, but for the immediacy, she can't care about that.

Rather, she spends her time pondering two things: how the hell _Damon Salvatore_ is more or less wasting away, and how the hell she's supposed to fix him.

As far as answers go, she has no fucking clue.

* * *

Two weeks after It, and Elena still hadn't seen hide or hair of Damon; at least, not anywhere on the main floor. She wonders at what point his body will start shutting down from lack of O-negative, and how long it would take before he'd be so weak _she_ could overpower him.

Now more than ever, she wishes she had _someone_ who could help. Alaric, or Caroline even. At least she'd be strong enough to manhandle Damon. But she doesn't. It's just her.

On the fifteenth day, she makes up her mind. By the front door lies Alaric's bag of vampire hunting paraphernalia that Damon had had the foresight to bring back to the house (_We might need it…for…I dunno…something_, he'd faltered; she thinks now he'd done so because it's all that remains of his friend). Opening it up, she lets out a sigh of relief.

There's one dart left, the benign-looking clear liquid belying its potent effects. She walks up the stairs, dart behind her back, and enters Stefan's room, once more not glancing at anything inside; nothing beside the room's sole occupant, that is.

He looks up at her with blank eyes, and she tries not to show on her face the reaction to his appearance. Sitting down beside him, she gently, silently, pulls him into a hug. He doesn't respond (much like, she suddenly remembers, back when they'd failed to find Katherine inside the tomb), but he's not tensed, which tells her he's not on his guard.

Closing her eyes, Elena jabs the needle into Damon's side, depressing the syringe. Only halfway, though, because she has a feeling the full dose wouldn't just temporarily incapacitate him—it'd _debilitate_.

He grunts, but quickly the vervain makes its way through his system, and within a few seconds, he lies limp in her arms.

Clenching her fingers in his shirt, she looks around Stefan's room for the first time in over two weeks. Her eyes land on his nightstand, on a picture she recalls them taking about a year ago.

"Stefan," Elena despairs, tears marring her vision, "why'd you have to… You were supposed to be here _forever_. How the hell do you expect me to just go on like nothing happened? And your _brother_. How do you expect _him_ to go on like nothing happened?"

No answer reaches her, and she instead buries her head in Damon's shoulder, tears soaking his shirt.

* * *

It's no easy feat for Elena to get him onto the couch, and she apologizes to his limp form as she drags him down the stairs, hefting his body awkwardly onto the cushions.

Normally so full of life (so to speak), Damon lolling unconscious, face paler than snow, the firelight illuminating shadows on his face, is no less than stark. Cruel.

She's not entirely sure why (considering neither resident (well…one a former resident…) of the boardinghouse actually eats), but when she walks into the kitchen, she finds a variety of cooking knives. Reason or no, however, she grabs one, glad that at least this time, the cutting edge she'll need is less infection-prone. So, with a sigh (she's surprised she doesn't have a scar from all this), she drags the blade across her palm, a thick line of red obligingly appearing.

She walks back into the living room and sits on the edge of the couch and, holding Damon's mouth open, puts her hand on it, letting her blood trail down his throat. It takes a handful of moments, but soon her blood counteracts the vervain in his body. He starts coughing, eyes glancing around trying to figure out, Elena guesses, why he physically feels better after half a month of feeling like shit.

His eyes, or possibly his sense of smell, finally notice her bleeding hand. "What did you do?" he asks, voice hoarse from disuse.

"I saved you from self-destructing, that's what," Elena snaps. "I've lost everyone, Damon. I can't lose you, too."

"I don't understand why," replies Damon. "All I've done is—"

"Fail me," interrupts Elena. "So you've said. But here's a newsflash: risking your life for me, defending me from Katherine of all people, isn't exactly _failing_. And you didn't fail Stefan either—"

"I did," Damon says. "He's my little brother—it's my _job_ to look out for him."

"Maybe," Elena agrees, "but starving yourself isn't going to bring him back." She pauses, reaching her hand up and brushing it lightly through his hair. His eyes shut at her contact. "I need you, Damon. You get that? I _need_ you."

Damon frowns, sitting up and staring at her. She's not taken aback when he slowly leans forward and puts his lips to hers, desperation and something else she can't identify (or, perhaps, doesn't _want_ to identify) behind it. For a minute, Elena hesitates, Stefan's face coming into her mind. But she rationalizes: she's taking advantage of Damon's weakness just as much as he is hers. (It's true, it _is_.)

With that, she snakes her arms up his back, shuddering as his lips move from hers to her neck, teeth—fangs restrained—biting gently (gentle? Damon? Yeah, she's surprised, too) there, hands simultaneously, possessively, pulling her closer to him.

* * *

It isn't fast, Damon isn't harsh, she feels no guilt, but it's nearly soundless, both caught up in similar emotions. Afterwards, as Damon's arm embraces her shoulders, she wonders if this is what it'll be like from now on. She and Damon, trying to prevent the other from going off the deep end, finding comfort in their not-quite-love, not-quite-lust twisted relationship.

Going back to school isn't even an option for her—she knows there's no way she could sit in a cramped desk learning trigonometry and proper sentence structure when all she'd have to come back to is Damon; only Damon.

"We're so fucked up," says Elena one day (they'd migrated to Damon's bed this time). "All this self-deprecation."

Damon looks at her, his expression clearly stating that he's still of the mind that it's he who's responsible for everything. "Thank you," he says abruptly. At Elena's confused face, he elaborates, "For saving me…again. I would've been comatose if you hadn't."

Elena smiles at him, the barest hint of legitimacy (neither of them gives much in the way of positive emotions anymore) gracing it. "You'd do the same for me," she says quietly.

Silence follows.

* * *

Months down the line finds Damon and Elena sitting in front of the fire, a glass of whiskey for them both. "What would you say if I said I love you?" Elena asks curiously.

Damon chokes on his drink, looking over at her. "What?"

"Just a question," she replies. She doesn't think it means anything, at least not for the immediacy, but they'd never really broached anything close to the topic before. (Damon had, once, but of course that only exists in his memory, not hers.)

Damon sighs, leaving Elena to ponder whether _he'd_ thought about it. He gives her a sad smile as he answers, quotes almost, "Seldom do those words ring true when I'm constantly failing you."

Rolling her eyes, Elena sets down her glass and stares at him. "Don't tell me you're on _that_ again," she laments.

"I'm just saying," he replies. "Provided you _did_ say something like that, I'm not sure I could take it seriously." Sensing Elena's objection, Damon quiets her with a look, trailing his fingers down her arm. "It's just you and I left. I think that makes you see me as a much better guy than I actually am."

Knowing Damon can be just as stubborn as she, Elena puts her had over his fingers, effectually halting his movements. "One of these days, you might want to stop thinking everything I say is caused by some kind of Stockholm Syndrome bullshit."

His gaze on her is intense, almost uncomfortably so, and she wonders what he sees there. "I think you've had one too many drinks," he says, taking her glass. Elena can't fathom why this little action is that proverbial straw, but one moment she's merely frustrated, and the next she feels like her veins are aflame with anger.

Before even Damon can see it coming, Elena snatches his whiskey glass from his hand and throws it into the fireplace, which spits high blue-red flames from the added fuel. (She would have slapped him or the like, but she knows from experience that doing so makes her hand feel like she'd just hit a rock, so.)

Damon's expression is nothing short of perplexity. "God_damn_ it, Damon," Elena growls. "I'm not some flimsy damsel in distress. I wouldn't stay here, with you, just because I was afraid of you, or hold you in exaltation, or whatever other scenarios you've got going on in your head. I know what I'm saying and I know what I'm doing. I feel like Stefan's death ripped me apart—is _still_ ripping me apart—but that doesn't mean I've suddenly turned into a poor man's version of myself.

"And anyway," she continues, voice softening a little, "do you _really_ think I haven't noticed?"

Damon's stoicism speaks volumes in its careful placement. _Too_ careful placement.

"It's been a long time since you've seen me as Katherine, hasn't it?" Elena says. "You're incredibly transparent, Damon. I sincerely doubt someone like you would do so much for someone like me if you didn't have…_other_ intentions."

Damon opens his mouth to object, but seeing Elena's face, he sighs, knowing at this point trying to dodge her wouldn't work. "What's your point?" he asks.

Elena sets her hand on his knee, her anger all but vanishing. "I'm just wondering if you're saying you failed because you get me by default, rather than fair game."

Jaw clenching, Damon replies, "Seems you have me all figured out, don't you?"

"You're still thinking that low of me," Elena scoffs. "If I said something like 'I love you,' it'd be the truth. I don't make decisions—at least ones like that—on a whim."

Damon stays silent.

"You told me something the night you gave me back my necklace," Elena states quickly, as if it's something she's wanted to bring up for a long time. "I know you did."

With sincerity even Damon almost believes, he replies, "I didn't. I gave you your necklace. Nothing else. I swear on my undead life."

Elena stares at him for what seems an eternity (and Damon knows what eternity feels like), then purses her lips and strides out of the living room, leaving Damon to his maelstrom of thoughts. He gazes into the fire, feeling his own faults—that he couldn't find it in himself to be honest, even now—and to himself muses again, "Seldom do these words ring true when I'm constantly failing you."

With that, he drains his whiskey glass, and heads upstairs, taking mental bets as to when Elena would get so fed up with him and leave. (To Damon, it's a matter of "when," not "if.") In his experience, people always bail. He's intrigued as to Elena's reasons why she's stayed, but he's determined to not burden her with his feelings. Not when neither of them is even remotely ready for something like that.

And anyway. He would rather have an Elena who's frustrated but curious with him than one who leaves him.


End file.
